The Confessions of Nat Turner

The Confessions of Nat Turner is a 1967 novel by William Styron.

It is a historical novel, presented as a first person account by Nat Turner, who had in real life led a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831.

Although it won the Pulitzer prize in 1968, it was strongly criticised by some black Americans for its treatment of Turner as a brooding and sexually disturbed figure. Turner and one of his supporters are shown as fantasising about sexually assaulting white women. As the "myth of the black rapist", painting black men as prone to sexual violence, particularly against white women, formed a longstanding racist stereotype, and had often been an excuse for lynching black men, this aspect of the book was understandably contentious.